New TC Electronic heads

[LukeFRC]

40 minutes ago, JapanAxe said:

Not really.

30W in, 200W out.

Huh?

30w at 120v in 

200w at 28.3v RMS out 

now I don’t know that much about amps or understand it but I think there’s another vairable you haven’t considered going on here...

[Woodinblack]

7 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

30w at 120v in 

200w at 28.3v RMS out

No, that doesnt work. A watt is a unit of energy, so 30w at 120v is no difference to 30w at 1 v, just that one needs 1/4 and one needs 30A.

It is not possible to produce 300w out of something that you only put 30 in, so there is some confusion on what they mean on the labels - I am guessing it is 30w at idle, but it can't be 30w at full sustained output.

[urbanx]

I've just taken delivery of a BQ500. 

Tested it briefly in the garage (just to make sure everything's working) and it's chuffin' loud compared to my Hartke HA3500. 

Will keep you all updated to the finer nuances of sound quality after a rehearsal. In the garage it rattled everything :p The aux in sound wasn't great, although I'm putting a lot of that down to a 410 cab not being designed to play music from an iphone. The knobs on the front do not alter the aux-in sound, only the bass guitar. 

[fretmeister]

15 minutes ago, urbanx said:

I've just taken delivery of a BQ500. 

Tested it briefly in the garage (just to make sure everything's working) and it's chuffin' loud compared to my Hartke HA3500. 

Will keep you all updated to the finer nuances of sound quality after a rehearsal. In the garage it rattled everything 😛 The aux in sound wasn't great, although I'm putting a lot of that down to a 410 cab not being designed to play music from an iphone. The knobs on the front do not alter the aux-in sound, only the bass guitar. 

Looking forward to a proper review!

[chris_b]

On 08/08/2018 at 08:30, Pea Turgh said:

Whats the story behind wattgate then, chaps?

The watts "thing" was a load of ill-informed internet nonsense.

I had a Staccato and the RH750 and these amps were certainly as loud as they claimed and sounded pretty good too. So there was no "con" just a lot of noise from people who should have better things to do with their time. If you use your ears then these amps are very good and do exactly what they say.

The only issue I have with TC is they "forgot" to mention the fact that the amps that could run 3 cabs were actually 2.67 ohms. There was nothing special about their cabs and you don't need to buy TC to run 3 x 8 ohm cabs. I did that for a year or more with Bergantino cabs.

[Jack]

15 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

No, that doesnt work. A watt is a unit of energy, so 30w at 120v is no difference to 30w at 1 v, just that one needs 1/4 and one needs 30A.

It is not possible to produce 300w out of something that you only put 30 in, so there is some confusion on what they mean on the labels - I am guessing it is 30w at idle, but it can't be 30w at full sustained output.

Because you don't create a pure, constant sine wave with your bass. The average power draw of that amp is 30W due to the fact that a typical bass duty cycle is around 1/8 power. As in, the average output of your amp is around 1/8th of what it's capable of. Imagine what fuel consumption figures you'd have to quote when selling cars if you measured their fuel consumption driven flat out. You don't, you measure the car in something that approximates real life use rather than full-tilt-boogie.

[Woodinblack]

You cannot quote an RMS output figure (which isn’t a bass) at the same time as quoting a duty cycle or an idle power, that is just inaccurate 

in fact I would say just writing 30W on the back was an actual lie with no qualification. 

Edited October 8, 2018 by Woodinblack

[BassManGraham]

1 hour ago, urbanx said:

I've just taken delivery of a BQ500. 

Tested it briefly in the garage (just to make sure everything's working) and it's chuffin' loud compared to my Hartke HA3500. 

Will keep you all updated to the finer nuances of sound quality after a rehearsal. In the garage it rattled everything 😛 The aux in sound wasn't great, although I'm putting a lot of that down to a 410 cab not being designed to play music from an iphone. The knobs on the front do not alter the aux-in sound, only the bass guitar. 

Well that sounds very promising indeed as the HA3500 is quite loud and punchy for a 350W amp. Only ever used one a couple of times when it was provided backline but fairly impressive, only avoided getting one due to the weight of the things. It may be that the BQ500 can surpass my fairly moderate expectations! 

[Jack]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

You cannot quote an RMS output figure (which isn’t a bass) at the same time as quoting a duty cycle or an idle power, that is just inaccurate 

in fact I would say just writing 30W on the back was an actual lie with no qualification. 

To continue my analogy, my car has 180hp and will do 51mpg. But not at the same time.

 

It's a standard procedure. A 200W RMS amp will likely draw ~300W or more for fractions of a second when you slap a low B and then <5W when it's idling between songs. So what power figure do you put on the back? The maximum, the minimum, an average, a real-world usage?

Edited October 8, 2018 by Jack

[wateroftyne]

This is an interesting discussion.

If we were to go back in time a couple of decades, to the days before Class D, when our Trace Elliots, GK's and such were 100w, 200w, etc., was measurement equally wooly, or was there more of a standard way to measure back then?

[Jack]

17 minutes ago, wateroftyne said:

This is an interesting discussion.

If we were to go back in time a couple of decades, to the days before Class D, when our Trace Elliots, GK's and such were 100w, 200w, etc., was measurement equally wooly, or was there more of a standard way to measure back then?

It's modern not ye olde, but fwiw my 750W GK 1001ii has it very clearly.
 

Quote

Power Consumption
Average 317W
Max 1476W

It's almost certainly better to have more information rather than less, but most just seem to quote some sort of average. I think it's always been this way afaik.

Edited October 8, 2018 by Jack

[Woodinblack]

2 hours ago, Jack said:

To continue my analogy, my car has 180hp and will do 51mpg. But not at the same time.

That is because it is almost impossible to get it to do 180hp for a sustained time.

However, if you stick a big distortion pedal on your bass and turn everything up flat out, or put a keyboard through your amp, you can easily make it match that output power for a sustained time.

So as analogies go, it kind of sucks!

 

Quote

It's a standard procedure. A 200W RMS amp will likely draw ~300W or more for fractions of a second when you slap a low B and then <5W when it's idling between songs. So what power figure do you put on the back? The maximum, the minimum, an average, a real-world usage?

On the back? I would have thought it would be obvious that you should write what you mean, ie:  "Maximum 300W". or "Average 40W" - anything else makes no sense.

Who cares when they look at the back of an electrical item what the average or idle current is? All you care about is that the source you are plugging it into can provide the power necessary. When you buy a cooker hob it doesn't give you the power rating with only one hob on does it? that makes no sense at all.

I bought a psu for a PC the other day. It was specified as a 300W power supply. Should I now take it back because it is only using 40?

If I look on the back of a TC RH450, here 

it says above the plug 85W @ 1/8 of max output. That is clear and unambiguous. Proper labelling. If it said just 85W it would be a lie.

 

Edited October 8, 2018 by Woodinblack

[Lozz196]

7 hours ago, chris_b said:

The watts "thing" was a load of ill-informed internet nonsense.

I had a Staccato and the RH750 and these amps were certainly as loud as they claimed and sounded pretty good too. So there was no "con" just a lot of noise from people who should have better things to do with their time. If you use your ears then these amps are very good and do exactly what they say.

I had a Classic 450 and my experience of the amp was similar to the above, it was plenty powerful enough and sounded great as well. Likewise with the BH250 that I had, unbelievable amount of power for such a tiny little amp, and no slouch in the quality of sound either.

[stewblack]

7 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

This is an interesting discussion.

If we were to go back in time a couple of decades, to the days before Class D, when our Trace Elliots, GK's and such were 100w, 200w, etc., was measurement equally wooly, or was there more of a standard way to measure back then?

That link I put up actually suggests the 60s and 70s may have been the golden age of wattage misdirection!

[Jack]

5 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

On the back? I would have thought it would be obvious that you should write what you mean, ie:  "Maximum 300W". or "Average 40W" - anything else makes no sense

Dude, you seem to be taking this personally as if I chaired the committee that decided this. I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm not saying it's what we should all be doing. I'm saying it's what amp manufacturers do and I'm repeating the reasoning that I've heard Bob Lee state before. I like the GK that I mentioned above and I like the TC that you posted, both seem quite clear. Most manufacturers don't bother though.

[Woodinblack]

32 minutes ago, Jack said:

Dude, you seem to be taking this personally as if I chaired the committee that decided this. I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm not saying it's what we should all be doing. I'm saying it's what amp manufacturers do and I'm repeating the reasoning that I've heard Bob Lee state before. I like the GK that I mentioned above and I like the TC that you posted, both seem quite clear. Most manufacturers don't bother though.

Sorry, I am not taking it personally, I just hate really vague labelling! Personally I think the TC450 is an odd label, but at least it is clear what it means. 

[LukeFRC]

I just plug into amps and trust that the designer took care of all this stuff.

[Dood]

Refer also the reply in the Trickfish Power Ratings thread.

You may as well just ignore the figures the marketing dept give. In reality, there’s not a huge difference in volume between a like-for-like 300 and 500W Amp anyway.

[grandad]

On 07/10/2018 at 20:04, JapanAxe said:

Not really.

30W in, 200W out.

Huh?

The numbers do seem to contradict but the electrical energy input can be stored by the power supply such that when demanded by say a loud low note it is used for a short period of time for that note.

So the power out does not exceed the power in over the long time, only in short bursts due to being stored by large capacitors which are continually recharged waiting for the next loud passage.

Using a water analogy, you could fill a large water tank via a dripping tap and then when full, release all the water very quickly in 1 go. And then repeat.

[JapanAxe]

2 hours ago, grandad said:

The numbers do seem to contradict but the electrical energy input can be stored by the power supply such that when demanded by say a loud low note it is used for a short period of time for that note.

So the power out does not exceed the power in over the long time, only in short bursts due to being stored by large capacitors which are continually recharged waiting for the next loud passage.

Using a water analogy, you could fill a large water tank via a dripping tap and then when full, release all the water very quickly in 1 go. And then repeat.

That does make sense for the bass guitar, as a clean bass note starts with an amplitude peak which falls away to a much lower sustained level, then decays away. The TC Active Power Management blurb describes how the system heavily limits the initial peak, so that they effectively only have to amplify the remainder of each note.

EDIT: Although we should all probably stop worrying about power, and listen to how loud an amp is and whether we like the sound, inevitably we are always going to want numbers to compare.

Edited October 13, 2018 by JapanAxe

[grandad]

I seem to remember, after reading through the TCE blurb some while ago, getting the impression that TCE were trying to imitate valve compression by their APM circuitry.

Maybe they're still trying with their new HEFT control.

 

[Guest]

On 07/08/2018 at 12:33, BassBunny said:

Gear4Music have the BQ500 on pre-order for £249.00

https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/TC-Electronic-Thrust-BQ500-Bass-Head/2M3F

£181 now which is fantastic value!

[SleepyOne]

On 08/10/2018 at 12:38, urbanx said:

I've just taken delivery of a BQ500. 

Tested it briefly in the garage (just to make sure everything's working) and it's chuffin' loud compared to my Hartke HA3500. 

Will keep you all updated to the finer nuances of sound quality after a rehearsal. In the garage it rattled everything 😛 The aux in sound wasn't great, although I'm putting a lot of that down to a 410 cab not being designed to play music from an iphone. The knobs on the front do not alter the aux-in sound, only the bass guitar. 

Could you write the update, i'm really interested in it? I'm about to buy this head with a K212 but can't find any decent review or opinion

[eude]

Did anyone else spot this little head on top of the new 2X8 cab on their site?
It's a rendering, not a real thing (yet) but it seems to be called a BAM200, can't find anything else on the interwebs though...

 

Eude

[Pea Turgh]

7 minutes ago, SleepyOne said:

Could you write the update, i'm really interested in it? I'm about to buy this head with a K212 but can't find any decent review or opinion

Distance selling rules - just go for it and send it back if you don’t like it. Hell, for that price I’m considering it an I don’t even need a new amp!